Day 3- Grand cayman snorkeling and Stingray City- Part 2

We used Moby Dick Tours for our excellent excursion.

We did the snorkel stop and stingray city.

We took a 25 minute boat ride out to the lagoon. Grand cayman has the worlds largest salt water lagoon. It was amazing. You could see exactly where the lagoon was. It was this beautiful turquoise water and you could see the coral. Then surrounding it you could see the deep cobalt blue of the sea where it dropped off to 6000 feet. The water was so warm, yet refreshing. Our guides were FANTASTIC. They taught us all about stingrays, how to feed them etc.

We went snorkeling first. Unfortunately not many of those pictures turned out very well. Darn underwater cameras.

But the snorkeling was great. Lots of beautiful coral and interesting fish. one of the best snorkeling stops I have ever done.

Then we motored over the the sandbar where the stingrays were. They were HUGE!

A long time ago fishermen used to come out to that area to clean their fish and drop the chum overboard. The stingrays started equating boat motors with free food. Eventually the fishermen realized the stingrays were very sweet and docile. so now you can get in the water with them. They are like big puppy dogs. They are SO SWEET! And so very smart. Most other tours do not allow you to feed them yourself. Only the guide does and then they take your picture and sell it to you. With Moby Dick we all got to feed the stingrays and they took our pictures with our own cameras etc. The guides each had their own "babies". These stingrays would go to the specific guides. Our one guides baby was "sandy". Sandy was all the way on the other side of the sandbar when we got there. She recognized his voice or something and came flying over and JUMPED into him. Another guide had esther. Another guides baby was Notchy.

Here is charles with a live Conch he found. (yes he put it back where he found it)

We got to feed the stingrays. It is certainly an interesting experience.You hold the food in your fist, with your thumb tucked firmly in. They come over your hand and suck the food right out of your hand. They have a 10 horsepower suction and if you are not careful will leave you with a hickey that can last MONTHS. Notchey gave charles a little hickey on his hand when he tried to feed her with too small a piece of chum.

we had a great experience on Grand Cayman. And here we are back on the ship, tired and sunbleached and REALLY sunburnt. Did you know that in The caribbean SPF 30 is like wearing no sunscreen at all?? Yeah. Charles got REALLY sunburnt and I got pretty red around the straps on my bathing suit.